Exploring Daryl Aiden Yow’s musical career before he plagiarized his way into Instagram stardom

Photo: Daryl Aiden Yow / Facebook
Photo: Daryl Aiden Yow / Facebook

Not that we like to kick a man when he’s down but the past of now-defamed influencer Daryl Aiden Yow’s is what Father John Misty would call Pure Comedy.

Way before the young man was outed as a career Instagrammer who profited off other photographers’ work (and badly at that), Yow first tried his hand at fame in the music industry. Yes, the “professional” photographer who rode on the coattails of more popular social media influencers was a singer-songwriter, and he was okay at most. Here are two of his earliest musical forays from back in 2009, when putting up song covers on YouTube started becoming a thing. In ’09 standards, these covers were pretty alright, really. A little off-key on Keane’s “Everybody’s Changing”, but Yow’s still a fledgling at this point in time.

Don’t get us wrong, Yow definitely knows how to sing. It’s just that he didn’t stand out from the hundreds of singer-songwriters backed by acoustic guitar rhythms. Check out his cover of Taylor Swift’s “Fearless”, an aggressively inoffensive cover that still managed to command a healthy amount of plays.

The man also started performing live. This is the promo for his show at Cineleisure in 2010, which had a pretty ludicrous write-up for him.

“Introducing Singapore’s newest product, a self-made musician with sincerity and a heart of gold that will make the ladies and girls go crazy is Daryl Yow. Armed with his silky vocal cords and his beautiful falsetto, Daryl is touted to be Singapore’s newest product”.

Had a little chuckle about that whole “sincerity” part though.

It’s only the next year that Yow really put more thought into music and launched yet another Taylor Swift cover: “Speak Now”. Though there wasn’t to any sign of growth or maturity in his style (it’s still a standard acoustic love ballad), the song showcases Yow’s bolder voice. He probably got more confident in his singing abilities.

This might be a minor thing, but his uploads on YouTube don’t display the fact that they’re covers of Taylor Swift tunes. Something akin to his Instagram posts where he doesn’t attribute the original artist for his/her work?

In 2012, Yow finally got a bit more adventurous with his Swift covers and released “Safe & Sound”. Throughout his short-lived musical career, dude just focuses on melancholic love songs, and though it’s by no means bad, even Charlie Lim has some upbeat bangers, y’know.

Then finally we come to his final outing, making 2013 the year he ditched his foray into music and finding wider success as an influencer. “Come back… be here” marks his most ambitious attempt at a Taylor Swift cover, with more elements beyond simple acoustic riffs and one of those cliched bridges where everything goes quiet except his voice and some handclaps.

After that, Yow transformed himself into the version everyone would be familiar with now. With all the flak he’s getting now, maybe he should have stuck to music, no? Or maybe not, since all he did is cover Taylor Swift.



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